Dr Delia Jarrett-Macauley has been appointed Chair of the Board of Trustees and of the Advisory Council of the Caine Prize. Delia will succeed Jonathan Taylor CBE, a founder of the Prize, who has retired having served as Chairman since its inception seventeen years ago.

On retiring Jonathan said “I have been very glad and proud to have led the Caine Prize since its foundation. We have come a long way and the Prize has provided a launching pad for very many successful literary careers. I am delighted that Delia will be succeeding me. She is an accomplished writer, broadcaster, academic and consultant. Most recently she has chaired the panel of judges for the 2016 Caine Prize. Under her leadership the Prize will continue to develop and she will take it in exciting new directions.” Jonathan was Chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation from 2001 to 2015. He was also Chair of the Trustees of the International Prize of Arabic Fiction.

Delia added “I am honoured and delighted to have been appointed as the Chair. I hope to push the boundaries of the Caine Prize: a venture that attracts the greatest literary talent from the African continent. I am looking forward to working with Lizzy Attree, our Director, and with the Board of Trustees and Council members.”

In addition to Delia, the Board of Trustees has been reinforced and rejuvenated by four new members. They are Gus Casely-Hayford, cultural historian; Adam Freudenheim, publisher of Pushkin Press; Fiammetta Rocco, books and art editor at the Economist; and Véronique Tadjo, an author and poet. The full board is listed in the notes, together with brief biographical details on the new members.

The Caine Prize is now regarded as the most successful and significant award for African literary fiction. Since 2000, every winner has gone on to achieve literary success, as have many of the shortlisted writers. Media interest in the prize has also grown year-on-year, with extensive coverage in leading broadcasts and publications in the UK and across Africa.

The Caine Prize holds an annual African workshop that brings aspiring writers together from across the continent to write, read and discuss work in progress. Stories written at the workshop together with the shortlist are published each year by New Internationalist and 8 African co-publishers.

On 4 July Delia announced that this year’s Caine Prize winner was Lidudumalingani from South Africa, for his short story ‘Memories We Lost’, published in Incredible Journey: Stories That Move You (Burnet Media, South Africa, 2015). The announcement was made at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. ‘Memories We Lost’ is available to read here.

-Ends-

Notes to Editors

The Prize is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former Chairman of Booker plc and Chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years.The Caine Prize is awarded every year for a short story by an African writer published in English (indicative length 3,000 to 10,000 words). An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, or who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality.

The African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka and J M Coetzee, are Patrons of The Caine Prize. Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is President of the Council and Ben Okri OBE is Vice President. Dr Lizzy Attree is the Director.

Delia Jarrett-Macauley is a writer of Sierra Leonean parentage, based in London. Among her published works is the Orwell-prize winning novel Moses, Citizen and Me. She has published two edited collections, the most recent being Shakespeare, Race and Performance –The Diverse Bard. She has held fellowships at the LSE, Warwick and The Women’s Library, London and is widely experienced in consultancy work particularly in the arts and cultural spheres. http://www.deliajarrettmacauley.com/Delia_Jarrett-Macauley/Biography.html

Augustus Casely-Hayford is a cultural curator, historian and broadcaster of Ghanaian ancestry. He has written and produced programmes for BBC2, BBC World and Channel 4 including the highly regarded Lost Kingdoms of Africa series. He is a cultural historian and teaching fellow at SOAS bringing with him a wealth of experience of the UK Arts sector and international contacts in the arts and broadcasting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Casely-Hayford

Adam Freudenheim is publisher, managing director and owner of the very successful independent publisher Pushkin Press. Before acquiring Pushkin he held positions with Penguin Press, Granta and Yale University Press. He is a member of the Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee. He brings knowledge of the publishing industry along with commercial and financial expertise. http://pushkinpress.com/about/

Fiammetta Rocco is third-generation Kenyan living in London and fluent in six languages. She is currently Culture Editor of the Economist. Fiammetta has previously been a wide-ranging and award-winning journalist and a writer of nonfiction. She is the Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize and a trustee of the Edinburgh Literary Festival. She brings experience of prize administration as well as prize judging, and has a strong international reputation. http://themanbookerprize.com/people/fiammetta-rocco

Véronique Tadjo is Ivorienne and resident in London. She is an award-winning author and poet, an artist and academic with a distinguished career until recently as a professor at Wits University in South Africa. She has mentored a significant number of Caine Prize Writers Workshops. http://veroniquetadjo.com/

The Caine Prize is supported by The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, The Miles Morland Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Booker Prize Foundation, Sigrid Rausing and Eric Abraham, Imara, The British Council, The Wyfold Charitable Trust, the Royal Over-Seas League, Adam and Victoria Freudenheim, John and Judy Niepold, Arindam Bhattacharjee and other generous donors.

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